


Wrecked

by PantyDragon



Category: Hawkeye (Comics), The Avengers - Ambiguous Fandom, Young Avengers
Genre: F/M, First Person, Hawkguy, POV: Clint Barton, clint/kate, hawkeye squared, hawkeye/hawkeye - Freeform, hawkeyexhawkeye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-03-04
Updated: 2013-03-04
Packaged: 2017-12-04 06:38:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/707687
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PantyDragon/pseuds/PantyDragon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I told her I didn't want to sleep with her.</p><p>	On one hand it's the rawest bold-faced lie I've ever told.</p><p>	On the other it's truer than the word of God.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wrecked

I told her I didn't want to sleep with her.  


On one hand it's the rawest fucking bold-faced lie I've ever told.  


On the other it's truer than the word of God.  


She's too good for me. Christ, look at her, she's perfect.  


Me: the only Avenger who lives in a shitty apartment building in the projects and subsists on coffee, beer and the food my neighbors bring me out of pity when I haven't been heard from in a few days. Every other week I'm back in the hospital because I've done something so stupid even I can't believe myself. Every third week I'm sleeping with some girl who I know is bad news, but somehow I keep playing the Avenger card or maybe the hell-yeah-I'll-take-out-your-mobster-ex-husband card and it always turns out exactly the way I knew it was going to. I have no control over my life. Even the dog feels bad for me.  


Then there's Kate. Katie-kate. Kate-and-barrel. Good family, plenty of money, intelligent as anything, fucking  _beautiful_ , and the best marksman of her generation. The girl does not need to go slumming it to make herself feel good. She knows she's the shit and has every right to be.  


Perfect.  


Damned if I'll ever know why she would want to hang around with someone like me. Damned if I'll ever know why she stopped in to eat my Chinese food and sleep on my couch and say “Jesus, Clint, why is there an arrow through your computer again?” (because  _ads_ , Kate) but here I am, staring at her like a first-rate creep as she sleeps and feeling shittier about it with each passing moment.  


I don't want to sleep with her. Really. I'm the last thing she needs on her record. She's going places and I'm a wreck who leaves his apartment to royally fuck shit up as often as to save the world. Yet I keep thinking about how much I don't want to sleep with her, and that makes me think about how much I want to sleep with her, and how I would give anything for it, and that makes me feel even worse.  


Part of me hopes she'll wake up and catch me, then I'll have to stop sitting here feeling sorry for myself and go to bed.  


Whatever part of me that is gets its wish.

>>\------>

Okay, _this_ looks bad. It looks bad because she's nineteen and I'm thirty-three and if I had started my fucked-up life real, real early I probably could have been her dad, but that's not the worst of it. The worst of it is that I want so badly to tell her no, but how could I?  


I can't force any of my own guilt past the taste of her in my mouth and the fiery, pure smell of her skin as my hands slide up her shirt – my shirt, she's been sleeping in it. Just that and her sensible black boy-short underwear that make her legs look like a fucking work of art as she slides one over my waist.  


_Bad move, Hawkeye._  


It wasn't a challenge, Kate. “I don't want to sleep with you” wasn't supposed to mean “convince me.”   


Suffice to say she's convinced me. Suffice to say she didn't have to. My pants are undone and I have no idea if it was me or her who did it, but she's naked now, and that was all her. She's as perfect as I knew she was: all lean muscle and hips and dark, silky hair clinging to her shoulders, meanwhile I'm fumbling around with my jeans tangled in the sheets, desperate to be everything she's ever wanted and knowing I'll fall short.  


I forget it all for a few minutes. I forget that I'm a loser and that she's nineteen and amazing and that this could only end in disaster, because the feel of her against me dismantles my whole world. How could I really be such a fuck-up when it's my name that she's whispering? How could I ever feel sorry for myself when Kate Bishop wants me?  


"Christ, Clint..."  


She's said it so often before, but this time I'd die to hear her say it again.  


" _Christ_ , Clint..."

>>\------>

There's no sign of her in my bedroom when I wake up the next morning. Just as well. Maybe she finally realized what I had known from the beginning.  


Maybe I'll never see her again.  


I should have manned up and told her no. She was one of the few worthwhile people in my life and now I've fucked that up, too. Par for the course.  


Of course, I don't know what I'd say to her even if I did see her again.  


I drag myself out of bed – all the old injuries aching like hell, as always – and manage to find my underwear in the mess of my sheets. I don't bother with anything else. It's not like I need to look nice for the dog and the coffee maker.  


I stop dead in the doorframe.  


She's sitting at my kitchen counter, geared up from head to toe: sunglasses on her nose and bow across her lap, wearing a look of nonchalance that would have made a Byzantine fresco jealous. With one hand she's typing on her phone, and with the other she's holding a half-eaten piece of toast. She looks at me over her shades as I stand dumbfounded.  


“Geez, finally. I was beginning to think you'd died.”  


I open my mouth, but nothing happens.  


She finishes chewing the toast in her mouth and quirks an eyebrow. “You alright there, Hawkeye?”  


“I...yeah.” I manage to mumble finally. “How about you, Hawkeye?”  


She nods a few times like she means it. “About eight point five.”  


“Wha...eight point five?”  


“Uh-huh.”  


I think about it for longer than I should have to. “Is that out of ten?”  


“Uh-huh.”  


I can't help myself. “Aw yeah. Right on.” I've got a douchebag smile on my face and I know it.  


“Get dressed, asshole,” she sighs, taking another bite of toast. 'We've got a thing to do.”  


“A thing?”  


“Did I stutter?”  


“What kind of thing?”  


“A fucking superhero thing, Clint. Just get your sorry self dressed, alright?”  


“Yeah. Okay.”  


I turn back into my bedroom and shut the door and _then_ it hits me. What in hell made me think that anything I ever did would diminish the tenacious perfection of Kate Bishop? She's incorruptible. She's the Madonna of the Rocks and I'm a fucking finger painting. My being beside her doesn't sully her worth a bit; if anything, it elevates mine. She's not just some chick who's settled for me, like all the others have been. She didn't sleep with me because I'm an Avenger or because she wanted me to kill her mobster ex-husband. She didn't sleep with me out of desperation or coercion or a sense of self-doubt. She slept with me because she wanted _sex_ , god damn it.  


I actually laugh a little in relief.  


_What a bastard you are, Hawkeye._  


It seems ridiculous now: that I could possibly make a lick of difference in the way she lives her life. As though she would ever be ashamed of anything. As though she ever makes mistakes.  


I'm a walking mistake, but it's all my own, not hers. Maybe sleeping with her was the only thing I ever did right.  


I suit up with a sort of fervor I haven't felt in years, not feeling the ache in my coccyx where it's been broken twice, not even thinking about the bum cartilage in my elbow or the compressed disks. Before she can finish her cup of coffee I've got my bow over my shoulder and my boots laced and she's sitting there, shades up, giving me that same long-suffering look that tells me not a damn thing has changed, and her least of all.  


I've never seen her look more perfect.


End file.
